INNOVATION
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VIVEK WADHWA
A digital skeleton key poses a clear and present danger
Forget AI. Quantums are the real threat Vivek Wadhwa is distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering and author of Your Happiness Was Hacked
There’s an old maths problem called the key to its companies’ treasuries, its citizens’ travelling salesman. The salesman has to bank accounts and the personal information visit a designated set of cities – only once of millions. Passwords are already cracked each – then return to his base in the first city. daily by human hackers. Imagine the The answer to the puzzle lies in plotting the prospects for a machine that can try billions most efficient route possible. Like many great of combinations in a few seconds. maths problems, it becomes exponentially Like much about the advance of more difficult as the setter ramps up the technology, there are many benefits. variables. It is child’s play to plot a route Inaccurate weather forecasts might soon between two or three cities. It gets a little become a thing of the past. The search for a harder by cities four and five. Once the game-changing cancer drug might at last itinerary reaches 22 sites, it would take a be within our reach. Even intelligent life on modern laptop 1,000 years to solve. other planets might be found, as quantum A quantum computer could plot the route computers are able to contact trillions of within minutes. Rather than solving problems planets in short order. as conventional processors do, with their Yet quantum computing presents a conventional algorithms which are based on serious threat, not least because the world binary combinations of is not ready for it. Much zeros and ones, quantums of the business focus has can hold a value of zero been on the march of It is akin to cracking and one simultaneously. artificial ‘intelligence’, a padlock by trying A human analogy yet too few eyes have every combination would be cracking a centred on essentially simultaneously combination padlock by dumb machines that trying every combination can test an incalculable at the same time. number of combinations Quantum machines sound like the in a single moment. hackneyed product of science fiction writers’ There has been some progress in creating overactive imagination. Yet they are almost systems that are ‘quantum safe’ – digital real. IBM, Google, Microsoft and Intel are fortresses that cannot be picked by a preciously close to developing a fully working skeleton key acting at light speed. But there model. IBM already offers an early version to remains a huge challenge in rolling out these its cloud clients. countermeasures to existing databases. So what? The advance of computing The technology sector, like most power is surely something to be welcomed? industries, likes a deadline. The last major Not always. The lock analogy is particularly mathematical maelstrom to be visited upon apt because it extends into the possible uses of the industry was the Y2K bug – which was a quantum computer. If such a machine can at least accompanied by a crystal-clear time solve a 22-city salesman problem in minutes, of impact (the year 2000). There is no such how long will it take it to crack confidential deadline for quantum computing. Will it be email servers, password databases and ready in ten years, five years, 18 months? corporate bank accounts? There are a finite The greatest danger is that many amount of combinations possible, and a international systems are not ready for the quantum could try them all in a heartbeat. onslaught. It remains very possible that an The consequences for a national advanced power uses its quantum force government that lags in the quantum to sweep up all the world’s data – while computing race are breathtaking. A malign other countries are still struggling with the foreign power could hold a digital skeleton salesman’s route from cities five to six. Q3 2018 Dialogue